[This article is subject to a legal complaint]THE fashion world is reeling from the most terrible scandal. Something ghastly and entirely unacceptable has happened. I refer, of course, to the incident when a man turned up at the FrostFrench fashion show, the most sought-after venue of London Fashion Week, wearing (and I can hardly bring myself to write this) an off-the-peg Marks & Spencer jacket. An audible gasp went up as he took his place beside the catwalk. I know, because I was there. And I was wearing the jacket.
I had been sent to take the temperature of London Fashion Week after the other scandal — the one involving about half the refined vegetation of Colombia and a certain, rather attractive, nose. The day before the FrostFrench show, Kate Moss had been dropped by Burberry and Chanel, but it was rumoured that the world’s most famous model and coke-cutter was still planning to make an appearance here, in a show of support for her friend Sadie Frost, one half of FrostFrench. Long before the appointed hour, a scrum of press and dedicated followers of fashion had gathered on the pavement outside Home House.
To say that the Moss imbroglio has gripped the fashion world would be a wild understatement in an industry not given to reserve. Fashion is the acme of exhibitionism, but the catwalk is now under scrutiny of a different and distinctly uncomfortable sort. The Moss story has put a spotlight on the disparity between the supermodel glamour and the reality of backstage life; the confusion of an industry that seems to tolerate drugs discreetly, until someone is busted; the contrast between the full-colour fashion pose, and the grainy newspaper image of a women bent over a line of cocaine.
The fashion industry, obviously, is about projecting a perfect, fantasy image; suddenly, the emperor of fashion has no clothes. For an ingénue like me, a fashion show is a bizarre, otherworldly experience. For this is the ultimate capitalist confection: a display of unfeasible clothes, on women of unnatural shape, created to persuade normal people to want something they probably cannot afford in shapes most people cannot wear.
First we waited on the pavement. It is considered de rigueur for fashion shows to run late, because it makes a crowd for the “stars” to wade through, and thus better pictures. I waited alongside a charming lady wearing a cerise wombat on her head and dreadlocks, who tutted loudly, in French.
Even here the moral confusion over Kate Moss’s situation was evident. I bumped into an old friend who has worked on a major fashion publication for years. “Kate has been very silly,” she said gravely. For taking drugs, I wondered, or just for being photographed taking drugs? “For mixing with people who would sell pictures to the Daily Mirror,” she replied.
Finally we are crammed into a small, hot room, with many beautiful people lining the walls and sipping out of small buckets of champagne. I took my tiny gold seat and assumed the unmistakable demeanour of a secretive Russian multibillionaire wearing an M&S jacket ironically.
Opposite, my helpful neighbour informed me, were two giantesses of the fashion industry: Isabella Blow of Tatler and Suzy Menkes of the International Herald Tribune. Menkes was wearing a Tintin quiff, a purple fur astrakhan jacket, a violet shirt and burgundy trousers. She looked like a badly bruised eye. Ms Blow’s breasts were piling out of her top. A sound system blasted out the familiar tunes from High Society. There was still no sign of Moss herself, although there was a brief frisson when Meg Whatsit who used to go out with Thingy Gallagher in Oasis sauntered in to a volley of flashbulbs.
The Moss saga was being avidly pored over. “Apparently Rimmel is going to pull out,” said a woman upholstered in lamé. (Sure enough, the cosmetics company has since expressed “shock and dismay” that the waif-thin, rock-chick, famously hardpartying model had been taking drugs.) Her neighbour had a fresh rumour: “Apparently the Mirror had those pictures for ages, and only used them when Kate said she was moving to America. It was pure revenge.”
Then the music became urgent, heralding the arrival of the models. I don’t know if any of these breathtaking and strangely identical aliens on stilts had been taking drugs but something very odd had happened to their hair, which was frizzed out in front, as if each had sucked on a live electric cable just before coming on stage. They looked very cross; it has been a tough week.
It was getting hotter. Make-up was beginning to weep; running repairs were carried out discreetly in the mirrored walls. The Menkes quiff drooped a little. I noticed that as the show neared its end the models were panting under their breaths, so to speak, exhausted with the effort of gliding down the runway and then hurtling backstage to change, before tottering to the starting line again to restart that inhuman walk, the slouching, hips-thrust gait, the empty eyes. As a spectacle it was terribly beautiful, fragile and superficial: a transitory high, the perfect escapism from reality. The clothes seemed nice, too. A bit frilly, but nice.
Later, on the pavement, one of the models gave her view of the drugs situation. “It’s a problem for the industry, but it always has been and it always will be. It will never disappear,” said Olga Serova, who is Estonian, 20, and roughly 8ft tall. Then she ran away, like an impossibly attractive giraffe, into another taxi, another show, another party. I have seldom seen anyone look more tired and stressed.
Outside, the contradictions piled up. Dropping the supermodel for failing to be a role model was now all the rage: Gloria Vanderbilt denim was reconsidering Moss’s contract, and a campaign featuring Moss with other models striking “Charlie’s Angel” poses. The angel no more, thanks to “charlie”. The police announced they were looking into the Moss case, not because she has behaved objectively worse than any other user of illegal drugs, but because she is famous enough to be worth making an example of.
Meanwhile, cocaine continued to dust the after-show party scene. At Cocoon, where FrostFrench held its subterranean bash, partygoers could be heard inquiring of one another: “Have you got any Kate Moss on you?” and “Coming for a quick Kate Moss?”
Kate Moss herself never appeared: she was everywhere, but nowhere, which somehow seemed apt for this lovely, unreal, perpetually youthful make-believe world.
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